Leonid Lozbenko, Deputy Head of the FCS of Russia and Liu Gouchan, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the People’s Republic of China, visited the storage facility complex which is being constructed in the territory of the free economic zone, the «Sherrizone» on March 10th, 2006. This is the first such project in Russia, which is funded by the Chinese businessmen with full support of the Chinese government and its political leadership. The project is realized by the Center for Development of Trade and Management of Investments in Europe of the Chinese Commerce House “Friendship”.

The construction works are carried out in full compliance with the requirements of the FCS of Russia. Later on the object of the construction will be issued a license of all-Russian customs broker and included in the Register of temporary storage facilities and customs control by technical means.

This is a direct response of the Chinese business to the proposals of customs authorities of Russia made approximately two years ago, to conduct exportation of Chinese goods to Russia directly by the Chinese companies without assistance of brokers. Thus, the Chinese businessmen are demonstrating the desire to eradicate negative elements still present in Russian-Chinese trade and to make it fully civilized.

The construction of a state of the art customs terminal, intended for handling of cargoes from the largest Chinese companies, may become a vital tool in counteraction to unauthentic declaring of goods and importation of counterfeit products. This will facilitate real involvement of the Chinese customs service in the process of information exchange and development of cooperation between the two customs services.

At the meeting L.Lozbenko commented on positive progress of the relations between the two countries, including in foreign trade, and also noted that apart from the goal of increasing the volume of trade it was necessary to develop the civilized forms of trade. Having thanked Mr.Liu Gouchan for the attention, the Ambassador showed to the problem of illegal trade schemes, he stressed that only combined effort of the two countries may help to establish order.

L.Lozbenko noted that the reason of that meeting was really remarkable. It proved the mutual interest of the two parties in the desire to bring order to Russian-Chinese trade. “The Customs Service of Russia is interested in such terminals, equipped with state of the art technologies. We are sure that with our support the complex is going to haver 100% clear, proven and legal customs clearance procedure. The Customs Service will do its utmost to make this new terminal operate without any faults”, said L.Lozbenko. Now with the participation of the FCS of Russia, using the program of the FCS of Russia there have been trained customs clearance specialists and prepared a program of further development of the territory. Commenting on the relations of the two customs services of the countries, L.Lozbenko stressed that they were developing with impressive rate. Both customs services, in spite of the specifics of the goals for each of the service, have the same basis for promotion of mutual projects since both services have as their guidelines the same frame security standards worked out by the World Customs Organization. L.Lozbenko told Mr.Liu Gouchan, that the two services intended to cooperate not only in the field of the information exchange but were planning to develop more exchange of experience between the customs officers.

Liu Gouchan thanked the FCS of Russia for the attention and support in the implementation of the project under discussion. He noted that China and Russia had been pestered with the problem of illegal importation for many years, which still remained an obstacle in development of the mutual trade. In view of this, the two parties were taking mutual steps such as the projects like the customs terminal under construction. Liu Gouchan stressed that it was very important not only to keep up the rate of trade development between China and Russia but also to raise quality of such trade.